New World Notes contacted Linden Lab and recieved a response, making it semi-official that the viewer will be banned. LL stated that "If that happens, Residents would be alerted via the official Second Life blog and email notification to current Emerald users." This can be read here, under the 1:15 update.

Hopefully the Emerald brouhaha can be put behind everyone quickly so they can get back to discussing The Future of Teens and Second Life.

"Lowering the minimum age of Second Life Residents to 16 is a first step toward this goal. As we progress with our plans to close Teen Second Life, we will be transferring 16 and 17 year old Teen Grid accounts, land, and content to the Main Grid. We are evaluating if there are ways to allow 13 -15 year olds to have safe access to limited locations on the Main Grid with appropriate controls at some point in the future. However, there is no guarantee that we will be able to do that, or when, as we weigh it against other company priorities at this point."

Anyways, for those curious, I have switched to the Emergence Viewer for now, basically the same as Emerald with minor changes, as noted in the change logs, most unnoticable to the average user. One of the changes however is the skin - go to Preferences > Emergence > Skins and change to default if you don't like the red. Also, under Shields tab, you can switch to LGG so it doesn't show you as walking around with that infernal Viewer 2.0 tag(how embarrassing!) - vertical IM Tabs is another default you may wish to change. After adjusting those 3 things I was good to go. The site to download from is http://code.google.com/p/emergence-viewer/.

edit: re:good to go, media(specifically video) in Emergence is hit and miss, usually doesn't work. In imprudence I can get no video at all. So if I want to watch a movie or something in-world I switch back to LL's official 1.23, which can be downloaded here. Sucks, and hopefully it get's fixed.

So I've been following the Emerald Viewer brouhaha the past few days, where they infected pc's with viruses and malware, turned them into botnets, been banned by SL, errr no not exactly but have seen all that and more repeated as gospel truth. Though par for the course in SL it's been awhile since I've seen this level of hysteria combined with such a disconnect from reality.

So what did happen with the Emerald Viewer to start this mess? What was the Denial of Service attack? When opening the Emerald Viewer it gives you a log-in screen, as shown in the photo below. It connects to the Emerald website to bring up a webpage with the different SL snapshots along with their locations, and also pulls up the RSS feeds from Emerald and Linden Lab so users can stay updated on goings-on, etc.

Recently, one of the Emerald Developers placed links in said webpage content using hidden iframes, so everytime the log-in page was loaded it was grabbing said links(but not displaying them visibly) from someone else's web-site. Grabbing said content runs up bandwidth, as does any increase in the amount of traffic to a website and it's content(legitimate or otherwise). This is why many websites block "hot-linking" of their image files, it's bandwidth theft(it's most common use is reposting links to images on web-forums and such). In anycase, the malicious code was hosted on Emerald's website and not within the actual viewer code itself. Was it a sh*tty and stupid thing to do? Yep. Should the developer be held accountable for it? Of course. And he's already stepped down and left the developer team, handing everything over to the other remaining developers, who are now forced to restructure and clean up the mess.

What links were in the hidden iframes? They were directed at a website run by a Hazim, well known in some circles and supposedly at least in part behind previous hackings of the Emerald server, along with the so-called "Wrong Hands" group which was/is a part of Woodbury(themselves a group banned from SL multiple times). More info can be read at sites like the Woodbury Herald(who claims the info from Emeralds website was "leaked" and not hacked or otherwise stolen and made public) along with Broken Toys who has a decent write-up of the history/long running feud between the two(complete with many embedded links for further reading, much of it again from the Woodbury Herald). In any case, I think this is all important to keep in perspective, a lot of people have been gunning to shut Emerald down for awhile, including the "wronged" and "woefully misunderstood & oppressed" Woodbury goons, which doesn't excuse Emerald's head developer from handing them(or LL for that matter) the opportunity on a platter. But it does show in part why the whole matter has been blown so greatly out of proportion and where much of the hysterics are being fueled from, along with the SL blog-forums and SLUniverse forums(the latter used to be a somewhat useful source of information, many prominent posters longstanding and well-earned reputation for being douchebags aside, but has been all downhill and rendered fairly useless ever since the shut down of the Xtard forums(aka the former XStreetSL.com forums) and ensuing migration from there, not to mention the ensuing migration of Woodbury U. "refugees" chorusing there after their most recent ban-hammering(again they've been banned multiple times dating back to at least 2007, reference here and here) from SL - in fact many of the old-time posters there quit using Second Life years ago as well, but use the forums to hang on and not let go, for whatever reasons(mostly old-friends, drama, and grudges on par with the fraudulent LL land lawsuit that was filed not long ago, start reading around page 11 at this PDF link, the good stuff begins on pg 13 - this display of attitude and behavior is actually quite common and "normal" for many SL residents. One of the Woodbury Herald's writers, himself permanently banned from SL to my understanding, applied to join the lawsuit claiming $500,000usd in damages & losses - article from Woodbury Herald here).

Another complaint commonly made about Emerald is that they collect IP addresses. While this may sound scary to some who don't understand how the internet works, just about everything you do on the internet, every website you visit, etc. your IP address is recorded and logged. This website included, for the record. Call it "data-mining", "data-scraping", or whatever "ZOMG da evil" you want. Besides being helpful to see where your traffic is coming from, it's rather stupid not to log that info from a security point of view. Further, it is far from uncommon for staff of a service or project(s) to share said information with one another, for any number of reasons(such as handing out IP bans for malicious attacks/hacks, etc.). And it was unsurprisingly the Woodbury Herald who made the most of this "scandal" concerning Emerald as well.

Hidden links in iframes and such is hardly uncommon either, if you view the source code from many of the popular websites you visit you'll see them all over the place, for a number of reasons(most legitimate, for advertising and such, google analytics and other services, etc, others less legitimate - for tracking your surfing habits across the web, though many aformentioned advertisers do this as well, improved search engine rankings, or just being a general pest). (I presume that with the "web on a prim" feature in Viewer 2.0 this is now introduced within Second Life itself, too. Hurray.)

Anyways, am I still using Emerald? Yes, for the time being. I tried the Imprudence viewer after downloading it yesterday, it seems to be the fanbois/girls viewer of choice today. I quickly found that it doesn't work with my graphics card(an up to date high-end NVidia, so no excuses for it. Not to single out Imprudence, I've always had the very same problems on Snowglobe the times I've tried it as well), textures were very funky(see photos of my goats below, unshown is it effected the textures on my AO as well). I tried both windows versions, regular and optimized, to same effect. Actually, the non-optimized I was on less than 5 minutes and it crashed before I could close and uninstall. Not to mention other faults such as an intrusively large mini-map, which doing a lot of sailing and exploring really sucks, but again this type of complaint is meaningless when the viewer itself is essentially non-functional and unusable.

2nd photo a snapshot of my partner's lovely experience with Imprudence Viewer, so it's not just me:

As many know, LL has sent out a letter to users concering the Emerald Viewer, encouraging users to abandon it in favor of Linden Lab's own official viewers(2.0 and Snowglobe) or other 3rd party viewers listed on their website. I do hope that LL does the right thing and allows the Emerald Viewer back on the approved list, and not block log-ins from their customers using it. The Emerald Viewer has long been a thorn in LL's side, especially after the near universally hated Viewer 2.0 release, and would hate to see LL's internal politics dictate keeping it off the list, by giving Emerald an unattainable sticking point in their list of demands, or whatever other pretense. Why would LL want a 3rd Party Viewer to so greatly outshine their own products? Given that it's the only 3rd party viewer that both is functional, and has the features LL's customers want & need(which LL has a long habit of routinely ignoring), it would be too easy for them to axe Emerald completely to continue swimming in their own mediocrity(honestly, mediocrity is an undeserved over-statement regarding their Viewer 2.0). But they must know that when the other 3rd party viewers are either barely functional to so many users, and are well behind the curve of Emerald, many will flock to said Viewer 2.0(if not leave SL entirely), and some in the Lab would gladly use this opportunity to get rid of this thorn in their side, pardon my cynicism. I do think that Emerald having recently recruited two former Linden employees helps them regain their footing, unless again there's internal politics at play within the Lab. Time will tell.

A last note of interest, in an announcement posted today by the Emerald team it has been stated that "Linden Lab has told us that they want us to stop using the emkdu.dll or llkdu.dll files because they are not compliant with the GPL." I've already seen numerous people on the SLUniverse forums taking the llkdu file from the SL official viewers and adding it to their own 3rd party viewers. So if it's a requirement of Emerald to remove llkdu.dll file in their own viewer in order to fall in-line with Linden Lab's Third Party Viewer Policy and not be blocked from logging in entirely, does this mean others doing it will soon find themselves unable to log in on their own modded viewers for violating the GPL and TPV policy, or will it be overlooked? Again, pardon my cynicism.

Profile photo: $250L for simple plain colored background, $350L for a location shot. Usually a close-up face shot unless you want something different. I charge 3x fee for full perm photos, with modify/copy/transfer permissions, so $750L and $1,050L respectively per shot.

Portfolio for models and such: 7 pics for $2000L, $2500L for location shots, with copy/transfer permissions. Studio shots are geared toward people modeling clothes, shoes, etc. With locations shots it's best if you have your own poses, unless there are rez permissions and reasonable auto-return for a modeling stand on the land. Also plan on multiple shoots if needed for locations. Mix of close-up, upper body, and full body, whatever you need. Again 3x for full perm photos, which you can save to hard disc, so $6000L and $7500L. All photos include a small unobtrusive watermark, largely transparent and unnoticable, so I can retain credit over my work. If you need more than 7 photos my prices are negotiable, fewer than 7 and the standard profile shot rates would apply per shot.

*Fees must be paid up front, I prefer a downpayment of at least 60% before the shoot unless you only need a profile photo or two. Rescheduling a shoot if you can't for whatever reason make it is not a problem, I'm pretty flexible.

I'm hireable for magazines, send me an IM in-world with info on what's needed and what you pay, whether it's freelance or long-term. Same goes for other custom work, posters or advertisements etc. If you'd like to exhibit a selection of my work at your establishment or something then like-wise IM me.

- Evola Courtois

I haven't had a chance to read through the whole mag properly, but the stuff that featured me came out quite well I must say! Much thanks to Yula Finesmith and her staff.

Check it out at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Tera%20Nova/204/194/22

http://sites.google.com/site/vaabuildingcenter/

http://www.koinup.com/Evola/work/213209/

Enjoy the holiday season!